Quest Software Experts Lead Development of Database Management Best Practices

Business Wire, Oct 24, 2006

Database Management Best Practices Reduce Code Errors and Increase Performance

SAN FRANCISCO -- Leading Oracle experts employed by Quest Software Inc. (Nasdaq:QSFT) are helping the company create a comprehensive and far-reaching plan to make best practices for Oracle database developers, database administrators (DBAs) and managers a standardized and practical reality.

According to Noel Yuhanna, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, "Twenty five percent of all database outages are related to human errors, mainly because of the complexity in managing databases and infrastructure, as well as informal data management practices."1

To help address these errors and outages, Quest has marshaled the database expertise of key employees to create a best practices charter for the industry - spanning the full database development and administration lifecycle.

"IT organizations face serious challenges when creating highly optimized and maintainable code due to the lack of widely-accepted guidelines for database development best practices," said Steven Feuerstein, PL/SQL evangelist, Quest Software. "It is not enough to create applications that seem 'good enough for now.' Instead, the Oracle community needs to build applications that will not only work well today, but will also be maintainable ten years from now."

Feuerstein, winner of Oracle Magazine's PL/SQL Developer of the Year for 2006, has identified solidifying best practices as the next major challenge for the PL/SQL community. As organizations move new databases into maintenance, Feuerstein says that a key challenge will be the ability to track code quality management.

Quest's proposed best practices begin in the development stage, where the database developer should:

* Write code for each program unit, testing and debugging each unit of code, ensuring that code is functional, and applying standard formatting.

* Optimize SQL statements by identifying potentially problematic statements, analyzing and testing various options, and rewriting to find the SQL statement that will perform best.

* Validate SQL performance for the user's specific environment by benchmarking the various alternate SQL statements created during the optimization step. Validation by testing against the production workload in a lab environment will ensure SQL statements scale properly and will hold up as user loads increase.

"Here at Quest, we believe that the best way to achieve the goal of qualitatively improved Oracle-based applications is to develop a set of standards, guidelines and best practices," said Mike Ault, an Oracle database specialist at Quest Software who has authored more than 20 Oracle-related books. "Steven has created a comprehensive guideline for developers, and I intend to do the same for DBAs so that anyone involved in the development or maintenance of a database will have clear standards appropriate to their role."

Quest provides tools that empower the developer, regardless of platform or skill level, to follow these best practices and proactively manage performance. This week at Oracle OpenWorld, Quest announced the release of Toad[TM] version 9.0 for Oracle (see related release) along with the launch of Quest's newest online portal for Toad users. Toad World (www.toadworld.com) was created by Quest to help users explore a best-practices approach to development, to share ideas with other Oracle technologists, and to further their own professional development. Toad World includes community interaction, expert blogs, podcasts, user forums, tips and tricks, and more.

Availability

For more information on database development best practices visit http://www.quest.com/landing/default.aspx?Id=763&site=&prod=& technology and download a free technical brief. To learn more about any Quest solution, please visit http://www.quest.com/products/. (Due to its length, the first URL in this section may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

About Quest Software, Inc.

Quest Software, Inc. delivers innovative products that help organizations get more performance and productivity from their applications, databases and Windows infrastructure. Through a deep expertise in IT operations and a continued focus on what works best, Quest helps thousands of customers worldwide meet higher expectations for enterprise IT. Quest Software helps organizations deliver, manage and control complex database environments through award-winning products for Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, Sybase and MySQL. Quest Software can be found in offices around the globe and at www.quest.com.

(1) Automating Database Administration Can Improve Efficiency and Lower Costs, Forrester Research, August, 2005.

Quest, Quest Software, the Quest logo and Toad are trademarks of Quest Software, Inc. in the U.S.A. and certain other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.